


Burn My Hands on Open Road

by sparkledark



Category: Walking Dead, Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: AU, Daryl in Woodbury, F/M, basically a season 3 do-over
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-09
Packaged: 2017-12-10 22:57:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/791156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparkledark/pseuds/sparkledark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If they are a three-headed beast, Daryl thinks Andrea’s the part that’s got the humanity left inside. The part that laughs and chatters and still cares about how things used to be. How they might be in the future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burn My Hands on Open Road

**Author's Note:**

> This is a season 3 AU, and my take on what might have happened if Daryl had gone back to find Andrea in "Beside the Dying Fire". Based on [this prompt](http://twd-kinkmeme.livejournal.com/4497.html?thread=6758289#t6758289) at the Walking Dead kink meme.

Andrea’s dying, that much is pretty plain. Daryl’s no doctor, but it doesn’t take one to know when a person’s just about reached their expiration date. Her breathing’s shallow and labored, her complexion pale and sallow. Her skin’s hot to the touch, but she shivers almost constantly. She can’t eat without puking, can’t walk too far without falling down. It’s been this way for a week, and last night she started coughing up blood.

“I dunno what to do,” he says, hating himself a little bit for sounding so weak and clueless.

“I’m gonna head up the road a-ways,” Michonne says. “See if I can find something for the fever.”

Daryl offers to go with her, starts to lift himself up from the stoop where they’ve been sitting for an hour now, contemplating their sorry fate, but Michonne stops him with a hand to his chest.

“Don’t,” she says. “You should stay with her. She shouldn’t be alone if...”

Daryl nods. No need to finish that sentence. No need to mention the fact that it’s not an "if", it’s a "when", and they all damn well know it. Still, they have to try.

He watches Michonne and her pets (he’s taken to calling them Smiley and Talky Tina) shuffling off down the road, and once they’re out of sight he heads back inside. Back to Andrea.

She’s curled up into a fetal ball on the floor with Daryl’s jacket pulled over her, up to her chin. She’s awake, hacking and trembling, and he sits down beside her, close enough to feel the heat radiating from her body.

“Michonne’s gonna get you some medicine,” he tells her.

She makes a wheezing sound that could be a laugh, or it could be her lungs giving out on her. Hard to tell.

“Stupid,” she says. “You should both get out of here.”

“We’ve been over this,” Daryl reminds her. “Ain’t leavin’ you behind.”

“No, you never do,” she sighs. “Should never have come back for me in the first place.”

Daryl rolls his eyes. Not this again.

“You’d still be with them now,” she says. “You’d be better off.”

“We don’t know that,” Daryl tells her, for what must be the hundredth time. “Don’t know what woulda happened. They could all be dead by now.”

They’d gone back to the highway to check, after Daryl found Andrea and Michonne wandering through the woods near Hershel’s farm, but the group had already moved on. The only sign they’d been there at all was a note scrawled in ketchup on the side of a broken down white sedan- DARYL GO SOUTH. So Daryl had gone south, tracked them for awhile, but eventually he realized the tracks were going in circles. They’d gotten mixed up with tracks from other vehicles. It was too late, they were too far behind.

Rick had warned him they couldn’t wait for him, had to keep moving. He’d known what he was getting into, and he doesn’t have a single regret.

Truth is, he was never too comfortable with a group that size to begin with. Before all this went down, it was always just him and Merle, two against the world. Hanging around with a dozen people at once never really sat well with him. Now his world’s shrunk back down to him and these two women, and that seems more as it should be. Simpler.

He’s grown so accustomed to the two of them; it feels sometimes like they’re three parts of the same organism. They can go for days at a time without having to speak, and sometimes they do. Until the silence gets to be too much for Andrea and she’ll turn to him and ask “What’s your favorite movie?” or “If you could have anything to eat right now, what would it be?” And then they’ll talk for hours, him and her, with Michonne interjecting a comment or two here or there.

If they are a three-headed beast, Daryl thinks Andrea’s the part that’s got the humanity left inside. The part that laughs and chatters and still cares about how things used to be. How they might be in the future. She keeps a little notebook with her, and sometimes she’ll sit next to their campfires writing about her day, or her past, or whatever else pops into her head. One time, she asked where all his tattoos came from. He told her the story of each one, and she sat there and wrote them all down in that notebook. God only knows why.

When he tries to imagine what it’ll be like without her, it’s a pretty bleak picture. Just him and Michonne, roaming aimlessly through the countryside, occasionally grunting at each other. He thinks after a few months of that he’ll probably forget how to speak entirely. They’ll probably turn completely feral. He doesn’t really know what they’ll do without Andrea.

The idea of something so mundane as pneumonia or a really bad flu taking her out now, after all they’ve been through, is almost too much to take. It makes him angry. And there isn’t even anyone to blame.

“Stop talking,” he tells her. “Just get some rest.”

She sniffles and coughs, pulls his jacket more tightly around herself.

“Need a pillow,” she says. Then she scoots a little closer to him and rests her head on his thigh. Her hair’s all matted and frizzy, and he tries to comb it out a little with his fingers. He knows she likes people touching her hair, finds it soothing. She’s told him so. And sure enough, after a minute or two she’s sound asleep, snoring and drooling onto his pants.

About an hour later, Michonne comes back with some pills and some shitty news.

“We’ve gotta move,” she whispers at him, trying not to wake Andrea who’s still curled up on his lap like a cat. “This whole area’s getting infested.”

“We can’t. She ain’t well enough,” Daryl hisses.

“You’ll have to carry her,” Michonne says.

“That bad?” he asks.

“Nobody’s carrying me,” Andrea announces, suddenly wide awake. She pushes herself up to a sitting position and holds out her hand. “Give me the damn pills.”

*

They walk.

Daryl keeps his arm around Andrea’s waist about half the time, holding her upright, helping her move a little quicker, but he doesn’t carry her. Somehow, she keeps going.

The sun beats down on them relentlessly. They’re running low on water, and Daryl’s not sure where they’ll be able to find some more. He’s not sure where they’re going at all, what they’re running towards. No one speaks for a long time, hours and hours, but it’s not a companionable silence this time. It’s exhaustion. It’s hopelessness. In all the months they’ve been on the road, nothing has ever felt so much to him like a death march.

The helicopter is the first sign of other human life they’ve seen since about three months ago, when a couple of assholes found their campsite, probably lured there by the smell of Daryl’s chipmunk stew. The women had been asleep when the two guys stumbled into Daryl’s peripheral vision, so emaciated and filthy he mistook them for walkers at first. But they didn’t move like walkers. They moved with purpose, one of them towards Andrea’s sleeping bag and the other towards their dwindling fire and the little bit of food that was still stuck to the bottom of their cooking pot. They had knives. Daryl caught the glint of them reflecting the moonlight.

He took them down neatly and quickly. Michonne burned the bodies. When Andrea saw them, she wept.

Going towards the wreck doesn’t seem like a great idea to Daryl, but nobody asks him. They don’t discuss it at all. Andrea just takes off walking in that direction and Daryl and Michonne, after exchanging a worried look, follow her. 

By the time they’ve reached the crash site, Andrea’s about ready to collapse. Daryl leads her to a bit of shrubbery and hides her away while Michonne chains Smiley and Talky Tina to a tree. The helicopter is trashed, basically a burning pile of nothing, and Daryl doesn’t see much they can salvage that would be of any use. He doesn’t see any survivors either, just one poor dead son of a bitch that somehow managed to get himself cut in half. The guy, or what’s left of him, is wearing a military uniform, so Daryl starts scanning the area for any stray weaponry that might be lying around. 

It’s weird to see a soldier, to think there might still be an active military somewhere, maybe holed up in a base or something. Someplace safe. Could it be that Fort Benning wasn’t actually overrun? Maybe that’s where the whole bunch of them should have gone in the first place, all those months ago.

He’s about to say as much to Michonne, to suggest they maybe start heading that way because Andrea needs help, more help than the two of them can give her, but the sudden sound of approaching vehicles stops him in his tracks. 

Daryl doesn’t like to hide, from anything or anyone, but they have no way of knowing what’s headed their way and Andrea’s in too vulnerable a position for them to take on a fight right now. He glances at Michonne and she nods and ducks back into the foliage with Andrea. Daryl finds a spot a few paces behind them. He can’t see much of the crash site, crouching down in the trees, but he can see Michonne and Andrea’s backs. 

For a few minutes he listens to the sounds of men stomping around (hard to tell how many) and then walkers, shuffling their way in to join the party. He hears the familiar squishing sounds of men crushing the heads of the walkers. He keeps his eyes on Andrea and Michonne, crossbow at the ready in case anyone approaches them. 

Eventually, the ruckus seems to break Smiley and Talky Tina out of their typical stupefied states. They start moving, rattling their chains, making too much damn noise. Daryl points his crossbow at Smiley’s head, but before he can ready the shot Michonne’s already taken care of it. 

Too late though. It’s too late. There’s a man making his way through the trees, towards Andrea and Michonne. Daryl can only see his back, but that’s enough. He knows instantly. He knows, but it can’t be. It can’t be, but it _is_. 

He squeezes his eyes shut for a brief instant, sure he must be hallucinating, but when he opens them again nothing has changed. 

_Please God no_ , he thinks. And then, _thank you Jesus_. 

Before his brain can process any more than that, he’s up out of his hiding spot, pointing his crossbow at his brother’s back. 

“Let ‘em go, Merle!” His voice sounds high-pitched and crazy. He thinks he might be crying. 

Merle turns slowly towards him, his expression blank, and then clearly registering shock. He’s still got a gun trained on Andrea. Michonne’s up in an instant, pointing her sword at Merle. Two more guys appear in the clearing, one pointing a gun at Michonne, the other pointing one at Daryl. 

“Oh my God,” Andrea says, and falls to the ground, completely unconscious.


End file.
